There is a buzz around concepts like re-wilding and meadow making. Not a bad thing but it's worth bearing in mind that nature is always seeking to re-wild itself. Sections of this churchyard in Hitchin have been fenced off during restoration work on the church itself. The unmown and untrodden areas of grass are starting to revert to a meadow-like turf of their own accord.

 Five minutes walk away an exercise in urban meadow creation has taken place. A couple of years ago areas of this park were scraped back to bare earth and sowed with a wildflower mix. The grass quickly grew back (standard rye grasses are a very effective and pervasive ground cover). The wildflowers didn't amount to much.

 However the areas have not been mown over summer leaving the grass to grow quite tall. Among them an attractive display of wildflowers, mostly the "weeds" that were already present in the turf before the attempt to create a new meadow. Moral of the tale: don't cut the grass so often and the wildflowers will come.